


Incurable, Nigh-Untreatable, and Plain Just Not Very Fun

by brineydepths



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders is a one-man healthcare system for an entire city-state, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, blanket-based kleptomania, bottle episode, fantasy epidemiology, gratuitous platonic cuddling, history's worst-ever recorded sleepover, medically inappropriate amounts of blood, quarantine antics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27616718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brineydepths/pseuds/brineydepths
Summary: The plague comes to Kirkwall. Kirkwall is less than receptive.
Relationships: Anders/Male Hawke
Comments: 14
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written to cheer myself up during my government-mandated self-isolation. Shamelessly un-betad.

"Well," Says Anders, staring grumpily at the small vial he's holding against the light, "It's not the pox."

What would usually be cause for at least a relieved sigh is met exclusively by moody stares. It's the tail end of a beautiful day in Darktown; the sun is shining through the cracks in the marble, the birds are chirping in defiance of starving refugees looking for an easy meal, and Anders' clinic is a shambolic wreck splattered with unconscionable amounts of blood for as far as the eye can see.

"Just like it isn't drakescale, isn't the blight, isn't dysentery..." Varric mutters, exasperated. He has at least half a right to be, dressed in plain cotton slacks and shirtsleeves that clearly weren't tailored with Dwarven proportions in mind. His usual coat is tossed haphazardly in the biohazardous pile of Anders' to-do laundry, vomit-stained and bloodied.

"It's not bloody anything, is it?" Isabela says, leering at Anders through the one eye she can bother to have open. "What do we even pay you for?"

"You don't pay me." Anders says.

"I pay you sometimes." Hawke volunteers, upside-down on one of the clinic beds.

"Not for healing."

"I offered to pay you." Isabela points out, from the comfort of Hawke's pectoral, shamelessly appropriated as a pillow.

"-- _Also_ not for healing." Anders murmurs, glowering self-consciously.

"Still counts." Varric says.

"Huuurgh." Merrill groans, cheerfully.

Four sets of heads snap back to her, laying curled on her side on the most comfortable of Anders' assorted cots. Instantly, Isabela sits up, Varric slides the bucket along and Anders crouches down beside her, brow drawn into what ranks as one of the more severe furrows that it's capable of.

"You alright there, Daisy?" Varric asks, clearly torn between wanting to rub her shoulder and fear of being caught in the blast radius of fluids. Anders, who regularly spends the vast majority of his day being spattered in various fluids and has long claimed immunity to being disgusted anymore, has no such compunction.

Merrill stares up at him, face paler than freshly-washed Hightown marble. "Can you please kill me?"

"Remember the Golden Rule - no dying with debts outstanding." Isabela recites, shaking her head but clearly at least a little concerned. She's slunk off the cot and has come to crouch gently behind Merrill's, one hand resting on her pale, trembling shoulder.

"But I paid you back for the cards." Merrill protests, as Anders rests one hand atop her forehead, hand alight in blue glow.

"Not for the dice game, kitten." Isabela tuts, smoothing her hair back.

"Not for my coat, either." Varric sighs mournfully.

"Sorry." Merrill murmurs. It's so gentle and subdued that it could melt the ice clean off Meredith's heart. All present in the clinic exchange pitying, concerned looks.

"I'll fix up your coat, Varric." Hawke offers. After all, he thinks, he has capable house Dwarves possessed of excellent cleaning ability and not a lot of questions when he comes home covered in suspect stains.

"Does the pain get any better when I do this?" Anders asks, and his fingers wiggle a little bit. No spell is visible from his fingertips, but Merrill winces sharply and turns her head towards the tattered fabric of the cot.

"Argh, no." She hisses. "Much worse. Much, much worse."

Isabela shoots him a dirty look and whacks him lightly on a feathered pauldron. Anders pays it no mind, shoving a hand through his hair and huffing an exasperated sigh.

"Well," He says, shuffling to sit more comfortably in the loose dirt of the floor of his clinic. "It's not brain fever, either. I just can't for the life of me think what it might be. Your symptoms match nothing I've ever seen before."

There's a dull, defeated, grumpy silence. Isabela has taken to rubbing Merrill's scalp like one might pet a docile lapdog. Anders rests his forehead in his hand, pale and tired-looking. Hawke beats down the urge to rub his back. Not long after they'd become friends, Hawke had gotten into the habit of delivering him food and helping out around the clinic. He likes to think it's his innate mother-hen urge to provide for those around him resultant of being the eldest in a family so familiar with disaster that it's permanently on the guest list of weddings and funerals, but is self-aware enough to recognise that it's likely more to do with Carver's initial, not-entirely-wrong accusation that Hawke was going to, at some point, try and 'get in the healer's pants'. He hasn't advanced much on the pants front, but Anders seems to appreciate the simple chores and occasional meat pies.

"Do you think I'm going to die?" Merrill finally asks, eye cracking open to look imploringly at Anders. His face is uncharacteristically soft and obliging, the look he usually reserves for gazing longingly at passing alleycats.

"Not on my watch." Anders mutters, full of resolve. Varric, Isabela and Hawke all let out breaths they hadn't quite realized they'd been holding. "Let's just start from the beginning. Maybe we've missed something. When did you first start feeling off?"

Merrill frowns. They've been over this maybe three times. "A day ago, maybe."

"Right, let's start there. What did you do leading up to it?"

"I woke up." She begins, scrunching her brow. "Had some bread and jam for breakfast."

Anders' fingers light up with firefly sparks of blue. He waves his fingers a couple inches over Merrill's abdomen before settling back with a defeated huff. "It's not food poisoning. Or ergotism. What then?"

"Heh." Isabela snickers. "Ergotism."

"Went with Hawke to do the weekly shop at the Lowtown Bazaar."

Anders raises a brow at Hawke over his shoulder. "You still shop in Lowtown?"

Hawke shrugs. "It's the only way I can make sure Gamlen's stipend doesn't go straight to the Rose."

"That's sweet." Isabela purrs, still scratching at Merrill's temple. "It still goes straight to the Rose."

"I know, but at least I can say it isn't my fault when they inevitably find him dead of malnutrition."

"Charming." Anders mutters. "Merrill?"

She furrows her brow. "Went to the Hanged Man. Played cards with Isabela for a while."

"Lost at cards to Isabela." Isabela corrects gently.

"Got cheated by Isabela." Varric corrects, less gently.

"Hawke came by with Fenris and Sebastian." Merrill recalls. "I went with them to a warehouse. We fought some slavers."

"Nothing else?"

"No. I stayed home all the next day feeling tired and Hawke came to drag me to the Hanged Man around lunchtime. That was when I started to..." She trails off uncomfortably.

"You threw up blood all over Varric and passed out." Hawke helpfully supplies, trading a look with Anders. He doesn't mean to be so abrupt, but it had been fairly harrowing to have to carry Merrill, covered in blood and barely conscious, through the city into Darktown. He makes a mental note to apologise to his neighbours; he's been reliably informed that blood-covered, frenzied, holding a comatose elf and flanked by two panicking rogues is not a particularly good look for property values.

"What was in the warehouse?" Anders asks, brow furrowed. They've been over this maybe six times now.

"Slaves. Slavers." Hawke says, "Angry men with swords. The usual."

"Traps." Merrill agrees, looking distant. "Fire. I think there was a dog. Or maybe just a very large rat."

"No cargo?"

"It's Kirkwall, Blondie." Varric reminds him. "Warehouses are for illicit proceedings only."

Anders shoves his head into his hands and huffs out a deep sigh. Varric pats him on the top of the head uncertainly.

"Not always," Isabela says, finger idly toying with the piercing in her lip, "If it was on Berwick lane, I have it on good authority that Warehouse Eight has been sold to an honest Amaranthine wine merchant who doesn't lock up his rare liquors tight enough."

"Now you tell me this?" Hawke asks, rolling over so that he can sit up enough to level what he hopes is an imposing stare at her. "We were fucking about in warehouse nine on Berwick lane and I could have been pillaging a rare wine merchant's goods?"

"Choir boy wouldn't have let you." Varric points out.

"Fenris would have." Hawke grumbles.

"It might even have been warehouse nine." Isabela muses, quirking her brow. "I was three sheets to the wind when I heard this, mind you. I got this from a very helpful blur."

"Amaranthine?" Anders suddenly asks, voice a little strained. There's an urgency there usually reserved for pointing out maniacs encroaching with swords drawn.

All turn to look at Isabela. "Yes, Amaranthine." She says, raising an eyebrow at Anders. "Why, friend of yours?"

Anders doesn't answer. He scrambles to his feet, hurrying to his decrepit old desk and tearing through the stack of unanswered letters and half-finished scraps of manifesto. It takes him maybe thirty seconds to find the particular scrap of paper he's looking for; he seems to read, and then re-read, and then re-re-read it before he drops it, a light tremor in his fingertips.

"Hawke," He says, voice grave, "Did any of the crates get knocked open?"

Hawke casts his mind back, a little dismayed. It's not like seeing Anders frenzied and unhappy isn't a weekly occurrence, but life in Kirkwall has taught him that when your healer is panicking, it's nigh-time to start making peace with the possibility of impending disaster. "I don't think so, but there were lots of explosions and whatnot. You know, usual battle business. Why?"

Hawke's 'usual battle business' involves hurling as many fireballs as physically possible with as little regard for his surroundings as he can get away with. Anders looks deathly pale.

"Merrill, I'm going to need some blood." Anders says, voice trembling a little bit. Merrill gives him a sour look.

"I thought you were against that kind of thing," She grumbles, but sticks her wrist out anyway. Anders doesn't even bother dignifying that with a response. He pricks the very tip of her finger with the point of his dagger, then hurries to his desk and lets the drop of blood fall into a tiny, clear vial of something that he's dug up from one of the drawers.

Hawke strains his eyes, but can't see any discernible change. Anders, however, apparently does. He lets out a string of curses that could curdle the taint right out of a Hurlock.

"Alright there, Blondie?" Varric hazards after a couple seconds. The answer is evident in the way that Anders is pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers with a look like someone has just told him that he's just won an all-expenses paid vacation into the Deep Roads.

"Not even remotely." He murmurs, gravely, then seems to steel himself with a deep sigh. "It's the fucking plague."

*

The 'fucking plague' turns out, namely, to be the 'Yergschmerdt Fever'.

"It's an Anderfels thing, if I recall." Aveline explains, as if the name doesn't give it dead away. "There was a small outbreak in Denerim shortly after I enlisted. It was.... graphic."

"Is it fatal?" Merrill asks, meekly.

Anders doesn't look up from his workbench. "Often."

All present exchange looks. "How often are we talking?"

"That depends."

"Depends on _what_ , Blondie?"

"Oh, lots of factors." Ever since confirming his initial diagnosis and sending for Aveline, Anders has been hunched over his workbench with the kind of manic, single-minded determination that wouldn't be out-of-place on Hawke's dog when presented with a semi-rancid lamb bone . Just about every potion reagent he has is splayed out over the surface. Hawke is half-sure there's a human finger on there.

Varric sighs deeply. "Best bedside manner in Kirkwall."

"It's fairly serious." Aveline fills in, crossing her arms. "We lost a lot of good men to it."

"Thankfully," Anders interjects, finally rising from his desk, potion in hand. It's bubbling in a way that looks distinctly inedible. "It's treatable if it's caught early. Elves are particularly susceptible, which explains why your incubation period was so short. Drink this."

Merrill accepts the potion gratefully but meekly. It is a shade of blue that in the wild might signal, ' _extremely poisonous, do not so much as think of consuming'_.

"How do we cure it?" Isabela asks. Like all of them, she's kept a supportive but markedly cautious distance from Merrill since the initial diagnosis.

"You can't." Anders says, cheerfully.

"Excuse me?"

"It's incurable. You have to let it run its course." Anders plucks the empty glass from Merrill's hands once she's drank it all in one go, now visibly paler and less vertical. "The best way to survive it is to just heal the damage as it happens, treat the pain, and make sure the patient is hydrated and rested until their body can fight the disease off."

"And what are the symptoms, exactly?" Hawke asks. "Beyond repainting the local Dwarf."

"Thanks for that."

"Sorry, Varric."

"Splitting headaches, for one." Anders says, moving onto some kind of other potion preparation that Hawke doesn't recognise and sincerely hopes he never has reason to get any more familiar with. "Lesions and hemorrhage in the upper and lower airways. Fatigue, nausea, fever, chills, a truly abysmal pain in the head, chest and upper abdomen."

"Charming." Isabela says.

"Is it contagious?"

"Highly." Anders says. The potion is now smoking, and smells faintly of figs. It is not as appetising as anticipated. "Via the blood."

Isabela, Varric and Hawke exchange looks. There's enough blood spattered over the three of them to give the Viscount's Keep a charming but grisly accent wall.

"Right." Aveline says, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You said it came from a warehouse...?"

"A friend of mine in Amaranthine wrote a few weeks back to give me a heads up that a fairly notorious alchemist might be extending his operations to Kirkwall." Anders explains, "He's a nasty sort, dabbling in blood magic. I've dealt with him before. He specialises in poisons and pestilence. I know he sometimes smuggles his _wares_ disguised as liquor."

Hawke gives a low whistle. "Even I wouldn't hear 'wine merchant' and immediately think 'crates full of poisoned blood'."

"It's Kirkwall, Hawke," Varric reminds him, "It's saves time to start with the assumption that everything is blood magic and work backwards from there."

"It'd explain why I didn't recognise any of the symptoms." Anders says, standing with the now-finished second potion. It is a lively fuchsia in colour, and smells a bit like burnt hair. Merrill has affected a charming green shade at the sight of it. "I've only ever seen one case of it, and that was very early on in my apprenticeship as a healer. It's extremely rare. It's what tipped me off - apparently, there's recently been a small outbreak in Amaranthine."

"Is Fenris in danger, too?" Hawke suddenly asks, thought having just occurred to him. "I mean, he's an elf, and he was at the warehouse."

"He's not a blood mage, though." Anders says, for once foregoing the snooty tone about it. "The more open wounds you have, the higher the risk of blood-to-blood contact. But he's still in danger. As is Sebastian."

"Which warehouse was it?" Aveline asks.

"Nine on Berwick lane, I believe." Hawke informs her. "If Isabela's blur is reliable."

Aveline lets it slide. "What will we need to do to contain this?"

Anders waits until Merrill has, at some length, downed as much of the potion as she dares. He takes the glass out of her hands with deft gentleness - the mark of a healer, through and through. Hawke fights the inane urge to blush. "First off, all of you with the exception of Aveline are in quarantine, effective immediately."

All three not indisposed with nauseating pain open their mouths to complain, but Aveline raises one hand to silence them and Anders continues on.

"Aveline, you'll need to go fetch Sebastian and Fenris immediately. Before you bring them here, ask if they've had any skin-to-skin contact with anyone in the last few days. If so, get the names of them and bring them here as well. Hawke, did Merril's blood get anywhere else, other than the Hanged Man?"

Hawke shakes his head. "She was conveniently already pre-wrapped in a blanket so most of it was contained."

"Most." Varric mutters, darkly.

"Get a guardsman to trace the route from the Hanged Man to here, anyway, and report any signs of blood spatter on the floor. If there is, you'll need to cover in lye and keep pedestrians away."

"Noted." Aveline says, businesslike.

"Were you in the taproom when you were ill?" Anders asks Merrill, crouching to eye level. She shakes her head.

"Just my suite." Varric says. "Am I right in assuming it was the right idea to lock the door behind me before we rushed out?"

"Very much so." Anders says. "And did you perform blood magic at your home since the warehouse?"

"No." Merrill murmurs. "Felt too ill."

Anders looks thoughtful. "We'll probably need to cordon off that part of the alienage anyway, just to be safe. And make sure that anyone who reports feeling ill at all comes straight here. An outbreak in the poorer parts of the city would...." He frowns, the grim look that Hawke has come to understand can only be properly wielded by martyr-istic healers who run pro-bono clinics in sewers. "Well, it wouldn't be pretty."

"Anything else?" Aveline asks.

"Nothing for the moment. Those are the most pressing concerns."

"And will you need anything?" She goes on, leveling a gaze at the clinic. Anders had quickly instructed one of his assistants to discharge as many patients as could be discharged and stash the remaining few safely towards the front of the clinic, far away from the ever-worsening plague situation now haphazardly contained to the back. The clinic looks particularly drab and shambolic, the cots pushed clear out of the way. "Potions? Blankets? Cots?"

"Not at the moment." Anders says, tucking an errant lock of hair behind his ear with a dour frown. "We may need food."

"And liquor!" Varric cheerfully volunteers.

"I'll see what I can do." Aveline concedes.

Hawke gives a low whistle. "If I'd have known this is all it takes to make you two get along, I would have started a terrible blood plague ages ago."

"One is enough for me, thanks." Isabela says. She sighs, laying down on the cot that she promptly claimed as her own. "Well, I guess this means tonight's Wicked Grace game is off the table."

"Not so fast," Varric says. He kicks open a drawer in Anders' desk, producing an old but serviceable deck of cards.

"Bloody legend." Hawke grins.

"Deal you in, Blondie?"

Anders is casting a furtive gaze around his clinic. Once upon a time in Lothering, Hawke had watched Carver painstakingly collect three-score baby garden snakes from Old Barlin's chicken coup - ostensibly in neighbourly good spirit, but really because Barlin, the utter legend, had helpfully let Hawke stash his drunk siblings in his shed to sober up away from Leandra Hawke's motherly wrath. In small town Ferelden, debts were repaid often in manual labour, and Hawke was happy to laze smugly about on a hay bale while Bethany and Carver spent their first-ever hangovers plucking writhing, slimy snakes from piles of old hay and chicken shit. This was apparently the right move; he got to watch Carver fumble the crate, curse, and drop upwards of sixty unhappy snakes onto his feet.

What he remembers most, though, had been a split second between the crate hitting the floor and the veritable explosion of snakes where Carver's face had a haunting expression far beyond his sixteen years - sallow, pale, but accepting, like an old sea captain watching an encroaching storm descend on his rickety old sailboat. This was, of course, followed by much screaming and many, many snakes.

Anders' face gives Hawke good reason to remember this. He's staring at his currently-peaceful clinic with the kind of grim, haunting acceptance of a storm oncoming that he could barely hope to weather. Or, several dozen snakes at velocity.

"I don't think so," He says, pushing his hair back. Then, softly, with feeling, " _Fuck._ "

"What do we play for?" Isabela asks, settling onto the floor and dealing the cards. "I didn't bring my coin purse."

"Tell you what," Hawke suggests, feeling both very appreciative of and exceptionally sorry for their healer, "Loser gets to explain to Fenris that he's going to be locked in Anders' clinic for the foreseeable future."

*

The loser's prize had apparently already been taken by Aveline, who looks starkly unimpressed as she marches Fenris and Sebastian into the clinic.

"Here we are." She says, and Anders looks up. The clinic is in marginally better shape to facilitate a possible crowd of hemorrhaging, feverish, pained patients - the cots are lined up, there are rows of waiting buckets, and a sharp divide made of crates and overturned tables has been created between the front and back of the clinic.

"This is unnecessary." Fenris hisses, looking distinctly unamused. His arms are crossed over a folded blanket, a pillow, and a bottle of wine that apparently hasn't survived the trip from High to Darktown unopened. "I feel perfectly fine."

"That will change very quickly." Anders informs him.

"Is that a threat, mage?"

"It's a prognosis, you prig."

Hawke pats Anders on the shoulder - half in genuine desire to comfort, and half a reminder that Varric had lost the bet, and it is now his rightful punishment to deliver the bad news to Fenris.

"If this will truly save lives...." Sebastian begins, looking uncomfortably at Anders for instruction. He, at least, seems to be accepting of the situation for the sake of the greater good. He also carries a pillow and blanket, as well as a gold-embossed leatherbound copy of the Chant of Light which Anders is not apparently above rolling his eyes at.

"Right," Anders says, motioning towards two cots, freshly laid out. "Make yourselves at home. Do either of you feel any pain or headache? Fatigue?"

Sebastian inclines his head slightly, coming to sit delicately at the edge of one of the two cots. "A little tired, but nothing to write home about."

"Fenris?"  
  


"Fine." Fenris frowns. He has made no movement towards the cot, eyeing it with suspicion usually reserved for potentially-cursed objects or passersby with particularly mage-ly features.

"No fever?" Anders asks, narrowing his eyes.

"No."

"Headache?"

"Yes." Fenris sneers. "It's currently trying to imprison me in a sewer."

"Oh, for the love of--" Anders begins, but is shortly cut off by Varric rising to his feet and raising a hand, a motion practiced from many years of mediating spats before they could migrate from the impolite to fatal.

"Elf, why don't you have a seat here with us and we'll deal you in?" He suggests, motioning towards the game setup that Hawke feels a little proud of. They've arranged the cots in a little square so that Merrill can at least observe the proceedings from her fetal-position vantage point. The potions seem to have done her a little good; the pain is half-gone, she claimed earlier, and the clinic now has an infestation of small pink butterflies that no one but her can see.

Fenris eyes the setup with less apprehension when he notices the bottle of wine in their betting pool. He sits down with a huff.

"Right," Anders says, turning to Aveline. "Anyone else?"

"They both claim they've been largely isolated from the moment they returned." She reports, though the tone of her voice makes it sound like she doesn't quite believe that. Sebastian, for his part, shrugs.  
  


"I felt tired after the warehouse." He explains, placing the pillow at the end of the cot and making his bed. "I thought maybe some quiet meditation alone might do me some good."

"I've instructed the Revered Mother to cordon off his chambers just in case," Aveline says.

"And Fenris?"

"Not that it's your business," He begins, not bothering to look at Anders. Hawke is a little apprehensive; what Fenris lacks in card finesse he makes up for in uncanny good luck, and Hawke's winning streak up until now has been setting him on the track to claim the prize pile that now boasts a bottle of the Hawke estate cellar's most palatable vintage, Isabela's second favourite belly ring, a sneak preview of Varric's most controversial novel yet, and an interesting rock that Merrill found that looks a little like Cullen in the right lighting. "But I've stayed in my mansion since we returned."

Anders rolls his eyes but is apparently satisfied. "And the warehouse?"

"I've sent my guardsmen to investigate." Aveline informs him. "And we're hunting down the owner, the captain and anyone else who may be involved."

"Excellent." Anders nods.

"I'm off to help contain this mess." Aveline says, looking unenthusiastic. "Try and not let any of these idiots die."

"No promises," Anders mutters, side-eyeing Fenris.

"How long can we expect to be here?" Sebastian says, uncertainly. Isabela, Varric and Hawke share their eightieth uncomfortable look of the day.

"Well-" Varric begins, diplomatically.

"Fourteen days, or until you develop the symptoms and run the course of the illness." Anders says, less diplomatically. "Whichever comes first."

Hawke winces at the sheer, medically improbable speed with which Fenris whips around. "A _fortnight_?!"

"Yes." Anders says stubbornly, eyes narrowed. "A fortnight, unless you develop the symptoms."

"If-?"

"Then it's for however long until you don't have symptoms." Hawke finishes.

"Or you die." Isabela contributes.

"Or you die!" Hawke amends, cheerfully.

Sebastian balks. "Surely you do not intend to keep us here for that long--"

"If this illness spreads, it could decimate the poor of Kirkwall." Anders interrupts, gravely. All turn to look at him. Even some of the patients in the non-plague ridden section of the clinic send some questioning glances their way. Hawke waves cheerfully at them. "This illness has caused the painful, slow death of thousands of people throughout history. It's wiped entire families, entire _villages_ _,_ out in as little as weeks . It's incurable, and almost impossible to treat if it progresses undetected. I am not being trivial when I say you will stay here, in this clinic, until either the disease has run its course or your blood is tested as negative, or so help me I will _keep you in chains to stop you from infecting anyone else."_

By the end of the rant, he is flickering lightly blue. Justice is apparently not a fan of needless spreading of disease.

"....And it's also just plain not very fun." Merrill contributes, meekly.

"....it's also not very fun." Anders huffs, rubbing his forehead tiredly. Merrill flashes him a thumbs up.

"Is there anything I can do?" Sebastian pipes up. "Other than remain in quarantine, I suppose."

Anders looks like he wants to argue, and for a moment Hawke is sure that he will, but something behind his deeply tired eyes seems to crumple a bit and he brushes a loose strand of hair back, sighing. "I-- Not at the moment, no." He says, casting his gaze about the clinic. "Unless you want to help prepare some potions for me. Other than that, if you can keep these idiots entertained long enough for me to run some tests, it'd be appreciated."

"Entertain the idiots," Sebastian says, casting an appraising gaze over their card game. "Got it."

"I take offense to that." Hawke says, trying to mask his furtive glimpse at Fenris' hand of cards as an eyeroll. "The preferred term is 'halfwits'."

"Quarter-wits, in your case." Isabela chimes. She is less subtle in her card-gazing. Fenris levels her with a nasty glare.

"That's generous." Varric says. "I'm thinking of that time Hawke stepped directly onto the trap I was visibly in the process of disarming."

"It's not my fault you're so short." Hawke grumbles. "Too easy to miss."

"And you're lucky you're not two legs shorter after that stunt." Fenris reminds him. It's a fairly funny memory for everyone who isn't Hawke, he's long conceded; he only remembers parts of Anders' angry rant as he healed the broken leg, but he was shortly persuaded to see the humour in it after half a jug of the Hanged Man's finest.

"Losing my legs would detract from the view of my ass." Hawke affects a mock-scandalised tone, rolling onto his back to hoist one muscular leg into the air. He does have nice legs as well, he's been told. He half-hopes it affords Anders a chance to appreciate that. "I'd never do that to you guys."

"It _is_ a nice ass." Isabela concedes sagely.

"Nice cards, too." Varric chimes, raising a brow at his convenient new vantage point directly in the line of sight of Hawke's cards. Hawke stretches his leg back to obscure it, making Varric duck out of the way.

Nice legs, _and_ extremely flexible.

Anders does not look appreciative. In fact, he's not looking at all. He's leaning over Sebastian, palm pressed to forehead, brow furrowed deeply. Sebastian looks deeply uncomfortable.

"No fever," He murmurs, more to himself than to Sebastian. "No headache?"

"Not that I've noticed."

Anders mutters something unintelligible that ends with _'fucking figures'. "_ If you don't mind, I need to examine your throat."

Sebastian looks like he minds that greatly. Isabela is sniggering behind her cards.

"You can examine _my_ throat all you want." Hawke chimes. Never let it be said that he would ever forego a chance to demonstrate his medically miraculous lack of gag reflex. Varric pinches the bridge of his nose, Isabela rolls her eyes, Fenris looks a little nauseous, and Merrill... also looks a little nauseous, but for proabably different reasons.

"I checked your throat already, Hawke." Anders says, not looking up.

Isabela snickers, Fenris rolls his eyes, Merrill frowns, and Varric pats him supportively on the shoulder. Hawke, for his part, just sighs deeply.

It's shaping up to be a long two weeks.

*

"Hawke?"

Hawke is awake, so he hears the sound easily. It's hard to sleep in the clinic. It's loud, for one, what with the patients and the unconscionable number of rats and Varric snoring softly somewhere to his left. Hawke has spent his whole life living in tiny houses occupied well beyond their optimum capacity, and had only just been getting used to falling asleep in a perfectly quiet marble room when the universe took its cue to stuff him unceremoniously back into the kind of shoulder-to-shoulder, politely-ignoring-snoring kind of sleeping arrangement he spent the first eighty percent of his life trying to get out of. Figures.

The clinic is poorly-lit without its lanterns or the light from the gaping chasm outside, so Hawke has to squint to make out where the sound came from. His best guesses are either Merrill or a sneezing rat.

"Hawke? Are you awake?" He hears again. Ah. Definitely Merrill. Or the Darktown rats have begun to develop sentience, and Hawke doesn't want to think about what their chances are as a society if that's the case.

He twists to her cot, the one directly to his right. "Yeah." He says, squinting through the darkness to see her wide, green eyes, glimmering over-bright in the dim light.

"Ah, that's good." She says, quietly. "I was worried I was the only one."

Hawke settles back down, shuffling in the cot. It's a wonder Anders still has a functioning back, if this has been his sleeping arrangement the last few years. He distantly wonders if he could crack open the good old ' _I know a comfier bed for you'_ excuse to get the healer between his thousand-thread count Antivan cotton sheets back in Hightown.

"It's so hard to sleep in here." Hawke murmurs, staring at the ceiling. "How do any of the refugees manage?"

"No wonder Anders is so cranky all the time." Merrill whispers. Hawke frowns. There's a strange, thin, weedy tone to her voice.

He tilts his head to look at her in the dark. "Merrill? Is everything okay?"

The answer is evident in the couple of seconds too long she takes to answer. "I think so."

Hawke turns over. Their cots are less than a foot apart, what with the plague ward being so full. Merrill's shoulders are drawn up, her arm tucked under her head. Her face is a little wet. Hawke's heart breaks a little bit.

"Oh, Merrill," He sighs, reaching out in the dark to take her small, lightly-balled fist in his own. "What's the matter?"

"It's nothing," She says, her voice wobbling a little. She swallows, blinking furiously in the darkness. "I don't know. I just-- It hurts. I can't sleep."

Hawke frowns deeply, squeezing her fingers in his own. "I'll wake up Anders, he can get you something for the pain--"

"No, let him rest." Merrill interrupts quietly. "I've had worse, I know, and he needs to sleep so he can look after everyone tomorrow, but--" She breaks off, taking a deep, shaky breath. "I just keep thinking what will happen if I die here."

Hawke sits up at that. "You won't." He promises, half-aware that he has no right to.

Merrill closes her eyes. "You don't know that."

"Anders won't let you." Hawke says. "He said this is treatable. You'll be fine."

Merrill doesn't look convinced. She flexes her fingers in Hawke's, eyes fluttering away from contact. "Just promise me," she says, shaking a little, "That you'll tell my clan? I know they don't care, but-- I don't know, it just doesn't feel---"

"Hey," Hawke says, interrupting her. There's a strange feeling in his chest, familiar and warm. He knows it well. After all, before he was Garrett Hawke of Kirkwall, resident solver and cause both of every crisis the city can come up with, he was Garrett Hawke of Lothering, eldest of a family beset by tragedy, onto whom the task of mustering spirits and offering comfort always fell. Something that the experience taught him, other than how to stare abject disaster in the face and call it a goofy name, is that there are few problems that can be solved with a big, warm hug, but also not a whole lot that are made worse by one.

Merrill makes a little sound of surprise when he crushes her in a big, strong-armed bear hug, but two seconds later clings back with the wiry intensity of an untreatable but adorable fungus.

"Remember the Golden Rule." Hawke advises. Merrill nods somewhere against his chest.

"Mm-hmm."

"Good, because if you do die then I'll have to take up blood magic to bring you back so Isabela can collect, and I don't fancy having Fenris _and_ Anders screaming in my ears simultaneously." Hawke says. Merrill laughs weakly.

"It's not fun, trust me." She answers, giving a shaky little breath. "Do you mind if I stay like this? Just for a bit. I promise I won't get any blood on you--"

"Of course!" Hawke answers, giving her a little answering squeeze. "As long as you want. What's the point of having these kinds of arms if you don't use them to hug people?"

She laughs again, clinging close. Hawke scoots the cot a little closer to give them a better surface, and true to his word, holds Merrill until she falls asleep.

*

"Um-"

Hawke opens his eyes to the sight he has been dreaming of waking up to for a good three years now - Anders, hair sleep-mussed, golden in the wan morning light, high cheekbones tinged warmly with a flush.

The half-second of bliss, is, as most things are in Kirkwall, shortly ruined. Anders' face twinges a little, somewhere between shock and-- _something_ , a little sad, a little surprised. Hawke blinks, and realises all of a sudden that Anders is standing above him and Merrill pressed close, her arms tight around what portion of his barrel of a chest they can manage to wrap around.

"Oh." Hawke says, blankly. "Morning."

Anders blinks a couple of times. "Uh. Morning, Hawke."

Hawke glances down. Merrill is still clutched close, pale and still. He panics for a second, before realising that he can feel her slow breaths against his arm.

"How are you feeling?" Anders asks, a little tense and hurriedly. He turns, fiddling with something on his desk. Hawke flushes a bit, mind racing with a completely unfair amount of awkward to expect it to be able to deal with this early on in the morning.

"I, ah. Fine. Tired." Hawke gently extricates himself from Merrill's deathgrip, a little guiltily. He doesn't remember falling asleep, tired as he was.

"Hard to sleep here, isn't it." Anders says, tensely.

"Yeah." Hawke says, stretching. His left arm is devoid of feeling; his right arm might be better off if it was, too. His back feels like someone has painstakingly taken out every vertebra, covered it in sandpaper, and expertly replaced it in the course of the night.

Anders is stalwartly refusing eye contact. Hawke's put-upon brain, never at its best before nine and a good meal, mutinously refuses to come up with an eloquent way of explaining the situation.

"I, er, about--" He begins, expertly.

"Sweet _Maker--_ " Comes a sharp exhale from the other end of the mess of cots.

Both Hawke and Anders whip around to observe the source of the noise - namely, six-foot-two of purebred Starkhaven blue-blood, currently choking up blood into a bucket.

Anders hurries over, cursing quietly. "Alright, easy." He says, carefully propping Sebastian upright. He looks desperately pale, wracking with low, wet coughs. Hawke feels a twinge of sympathy, wrestling valiantly with his twinge of regret at not being able to explain that what Anders witnessed was a platonic hug of perfectly appropriate comfort, and not... well, whatever it apparently was that had made him so weird about it.

"I feel like death." Sebastian says, hoarsely. Anders sighs deeply, resting one hand over Sebastian's chest, alight in a light blue glow.

"There." He finally says, drawing his hand away and shaking it out lightly. "That should help."

Sebastian takes a shaky, experimental breath, finds it to be unobstructed, and happily repeats the process.

"It got you too, then, huh?" Hawke sighs, sympathetic. Sebastian nods.

"My head. Ugh, I've had headaches before, but _this."_ He murmurs, rubbing a hand over where Anders had wiggled his sparklefingers.

"Fun times all round." Hawke agrees.

"How long do the symptoms last, usually?" Sebastian asks, directing his gaze towards Anders. The mage is currently putting his strong, elegant fingers to use obliterating a stalk of elfroot with a mortar and pestle.

"It varies between people." He finally says, at length. He seems to pause with his hand in the bag of elfroot, re-thinks whatever he'd been thinking, and triples the amount he was about to pull out. Hawke winces. It bodes poorly for their collective prognoses, if _that's_ the amount of potion he's making. "For some, the worst is over in a few days. For others, it can take weeks."

If possible, Sebastian gets paler. Varric would be having a field day with his pilot whale jokes, if he were just a tad more conscious. "Weeks, you say."

Anders nods. Maker, he looks tired.

"Anyway," Hawke interrupts, before the conversation can veer towards the depressing, "What's the breakfast situation like around here?"

*

The 'breakfast situation' is apparently that there is no breakfast situation, as Anders explains sheepishly. Hawke mentally berates himself for his ongoing failure to become a morning person; all the times he's brought Anders a lunch, when he could have been taking advantage of the relative peace of the freshly-opened clinic to make him a nice breakfast, enjoying the particular kind of muss Anders apparently has going on in the hair department before he can be bothered to fix it for the day. One golden lock twists over his stubble. Hawke has to violently quash the impulse to gently brush it behind his ear.

"No wonder you're always so grumpy." Isabela mutters, looking unamused. They've pulled as many chairs and cots as they can around the open fire. It feels a little like camping, if a little grimier, danker, and more pestilent. "If you haven't been eating breakfast all this time."

"Most important meal of the day." Varric agrees.

"I do eat breakfast, usually." Anders defends, but half-heartedly; it's clear to see that it's a half-truth, at best. "I just don't stock much here. No need to make this place more of a target than it is already."

Isabela quirks a brow. "People target the free clinic?"

Hawke sighs. "People suck, Bela. I thought we've been over this."

"Where do you get the food, then?" Varric asks.

Anders shrugs. He _does_ stock tea, though, and has brewed a considerable pot that they are all happily partaking of, with the exception of Merrill, still mostly unconscious, Sebastian, still intermittently hacking up carnage, and Fenris, who's done his very best to entomb himself under a mountain of blankets. "People bring by food. I try not to accept, mostly, because they generally need it more than I do, but it's still a nice thought."

Hawke tries very hard to not be jealous of the beleaguered refugees for stealing his signature move. Maybe he'll have to ramp up the flirting. Ham-fisted innuendo and abundant sandwiches just aren't cutting it anymore.

"Well, we can always get Bodahn to drop by some oats or something." Hawke says, stretching back. "Maybe some fruit."

"Fruit would be nice." Isabela agrees. "Maybe some cheese, too."

"And bread." Varric agrees.

"Maybe some more herbs, if he wouldn't mind." Anders muses.

"Let's save the shopping list for when the dwarf actually gets here, shall we?" Hawke suggests. It'd be around one, he thinks. He'd asked Aveline to drop by the estate and inform Bodahn that a plague has befallen them all, to not enter Hawke's quarters under any circumstances, and to please bring by the best vintage from the cellar when he has the chance. Maker, but the things that dwarf puts up with.

"Are we getting food?" Merrill asks, weakly. "Do you mind picking up some jam to go with that bread?"

"And some cured meats." Sebastian chimes in.

"More wine." Comes a gruff voice somewhere beneath the burial mound of blankets.

"Maker's breath." Hawke sighs.

"What do you do for fun around here?" Isabela asks. She's resting between Merrill and Hawke's cots, her legs bent over his lap, head resting against Merrill's thighs, half-empty mug of tea balanced precariously between two tits. Her feet are bare and slotted between Hawke's thighs, shamelessly leeching the warmth from there. The position affords Hawke a front-seat view of her utter and glorious pantslessness.

Apparently personal boundaries are fresh out of vogue, Hawke thinks morosely, and he _still_ can't get the one friend he wants to fondle to so much as give him a lingering neck-touch.

"That's not a serious question, is it?" Anders asks, brow arched.

"You can't be all healing and salvation all the time, surely." Varric says.

"No, sometimes it's taint and death." Anders mutters, deadpan.

"An excellent work-life balance." Hawke sagely agrees. "Anything I can do to make myself useful?"

"Nothing I want you doing while you're still potentially in the contagious phase." Anders says, finishing off his mug of tea. "Sorry, I really wasn't expecting having to quarantine you all last-minute. You'll have to find some way to entertain yourselves."

"What do you do on long voyages?" Varric asks Isabela. He looks much more at home than the rest of them, Anders included; he's dressed in the fur-lined gold-threaded dressing gown he paid an urchin to fetch from somewhere in Hightown, tied loose enough to show a particularly generous view of abundant Dwarven chest hair. "Surely you must have some advice on the subject of long confinements in close quarters."

"It's completely different at sea." Isabela sighs, wistfully looking at the ceiling. "Always something more to be done, somewhere to pillage, more wild, untameable ocean to conquer. Never a dull moment."

"There's a fairly disorderly puddle in the corner over there if you're desperate." Anders points out.

Isabela casts a longing gaze at it. Hawke thinks he can see a dead rat bobbing in it. "It's just not the same." She sighs, mournfully.

"How about we just play cards?" Hawke suggests. "That's usually how I make you all get along."

*

"Okay, that is _so_ against the rules."

"It's not, you said it yourself earlier--"

"Guys, please. It's not in the _official_ rules, but--"

"Okay, okay, _okay_." Hawke says, tone growing in severity until he can wrangle the attentions of all present. It's a gift he credits mostly with coaching a sword-wielding and fireball-hurling teenager each through their adolescence. "I'm going to flip this coin. If it's heads, it's allowed. If it's tails, it's not. Sound fair?"

Isabela crosses her arms and rolls her eyes, Varric grumbles, Merrill gives a shaky thumbs up, Sebastian nods (then pales with the sudden movement and grabs his bucket), and the blanket graveyard formerly known as Fenris shifts in a way that might be considered approving.

Hawke flips the coin. It spins in the air for a second, watched closely by all in attendance, before falling back into Hawke's waiting palm. He clutches it to the top of his hand, pauses for dramatic effect, then removes his hand.

"It's..." He narrows his eyes. "Uh, Varric? Which side is heads on an Orzammar coin?"

"Okay, that's unfair." Isabela says, "You can't let him decide which side is heads and which is tails."

"Oh, please, as if I'd lie about that."

"Why not? You lie about everything else-"

"I think it's the side with the beardy guy--"

"Do none of you truly not have a single regular coin between you?"

Hawke pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Hawke, a word?" He hears, and whips around. Anders is standing at the barricade, nodding towards the space in front of it invitingly. Hawke casts a brief glance towards the cacophonous five-way argument in front of him, then leaps at the chance to escape from it before it can turn physical. He has about two minutes until that point. He knows this from experience, and from having been the one to turn it physical a few times.

"Sure," He says, "How about 'titillating'?"

Anders rolls his eyes, but there's a little smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "I was thinking more along the lines of 'favour', preceded by 'I', 'need' and 'a', but I guess that works too."

Hawke comes to rest his elbows against a roughly chest-high crate. The non-plague side of the clinic is calm, with a few patients milling about and Anders' assistants tirelessly cleaning. Ever since the initial diagnosis, Anders has enforced a strict regime of hygiene upon all of them, and no-one passes by the barricade without first wiping down with a solution of some kind of herb that stings at the cracks in the skin. Anders is absent-mindedly wiping at his fingers one-by-one with the provided rag, gazing appraisingly at what are quickly becoming his most tiresome patients.

"How can I help?" Hawke asks.

Anders inclines his head towards the group. "I'm going to need your help with Fenris."

Hawke looks over his shoulder. Fenris is almost entirely obscured by his impressive collection of almost every available blanket in the clinic. What can be seen of him - about a quarter of his face, and enough of one hand to see his cards - is unusually pale. Hawke frowns.

"Do you think he needs more blankets?" Hawke asks, "I think he's trying to compete with Sundermount."

Anders snorts. It's more attractive than it has the right to be. "He won't let me examine him. He's almost definitely symptomatic, but he refuses to tell me what he's feeling or run any tests."

This is true; Fenris had threatened to bite earlier that morning when Anders'd reached out to touch his forehead.

"Can't you just treat him anyway?"

"Not without knowing what symptoms I need to treat, no." Anders says, sighing. "He won't even admit to having a fever. Look at that blanket monster and tell me that isn't a man feeling a chill."

"So, what do you want me to do?" Hawke asks. "Surreptitiously feel him up until I can get a read on his temperature?"

Anders makes a face. "I'd prefer it if you just talked to him, but whatever works, I guess."

The argument has progressed. Varric is picking up Bianca and Isabela is in the process of removing her shirt.

"It's not his fault. His experiences with magic aren't exactly.... Well, I'm sure you know. This is hard for him."

Anders looks desperately, painfully tired all of a sudden. "Believe me, I know." He sighs, "But he's already at risk from the fever, being an elf, and if it's not treated he could very well die. Painfully. And slowly."

Hawke's heart twists a little in his chest. Beyond them, Fenris is snickering devilishly as he puts down a card on the pile, causing Sebastian to throw his hands up in the air and Merrill to drop her head into her hands.

"I'll see what I can do." Hawke sighs.

"I appreciate it," Anders says, in that warm, earnest way of his that makes it seem like he genuinely, truly does; then he is turning on his heel and retreating to the other end of the clinic. Hawke bites down the urge to curse.


	2. Chapter 2

"Fenris, my friend. Mind if I have a seat?"

If the answer is somehow 'no', Hawke does not hear it, too busy plopping himself comfortably down in front of the fire to pay attention. As it stands, Fenris makes no movement to stop him, although that might have more to do with the fact that his limbs are firmly ensconced beneath a foot-thick layer of textile than any genuine enthusiasm for Hawke's presence.

" Excellent day today, don't you agree?" Hawke begins, happily cross-legged in the dirt. Fenris' eyes  flick meaningfully about the section of the dilapidated sewer clinic that the blanket shroud permits.

"If you say so."

"It reminds me of that day we went to the Wounded Coast and fought those slavers. You remember the ones, don't you?"

Kirkwall's Most Formidable Burrito blinks incredulously once more. "We fight slavers every time we venture to the Wounded Coast , Hawke . "

"It's Kirkwall," Varric reminds him from across the fire, not looking up from his novel. "You 're lucky to get  three steps outside your door without  disemboweling a miscreant."

"Yes, but these were  _special_ slavers." Hawke says. "There was a magister with them. You remember, yes?"

Fenris' eyes narrow incrementally. "Ah. Yes."

"There you go!" Hawke grins. "Dumb, ugly sack of shit."

" Exceptionally repulsive ." Fenris says, nodding.

"Tried to spout some  rude comment about selling you."

" Indeed . " 

" Made a delightful tearing noise as you ripped him in half." 

"Like  wet paper." 

" And I know how much you love rending magisters limb-from-limb." Hawke says , patting a rough approximation of where a shoulder might be beneath five-odd blankets.

"They  always seem to come apart  so easily ." Fenris sighs, wistful. 

"Well," Hawke says, stretching back and toeing a stray piece of firewood in what he hopes is a nonchalant way, "Remember how I restrained that magister in a telekinetic vice for you to make it easier for you?"

Immediately , Fenris' eyes narrow just slightly. "So I recall."

"I thought that was a very kind favour." Hawke sighs, stalwartly avoiding eye contact. "And you said you owed me one for that , and all this free time for reflection has got me thinking that I never really did collect on that, did I--"

Fenris interrupts him by snaking a hand out of the blanket mass and letting it fall onto his shoulder. "Hawke," He begins, voice grave and affectionate in equal measure, "You are a treasured friend. Whatever you  require  of me, you need only ask."

Hawke's heart clenches a bit. Fenris is so naturally intense that it's easy to forget sometimes  how kind and  warm he can be . It's a natural counterpoint to Hawke's nigh-pathological inability to take anything seriously, and Hawke is eternally grateful for it.

The thought of losing that hard-earned, strange, much-appreciated friendship inspires Hawke with new resolve .

"Well," Hawke begins, a little nervously. "You don't know the favour."

Fenris blinks at him. "Whatever it is, I am willing."

"Let Anders examine you."

"No."

" _Fenris_ ," Hawke whines, "It's for your own good! You've been exposed to a dangerous illness that already almost killed Merrill-"

"I am not Merrill." Fenris interrupts. "And I am not going to let that abomination examine me."

"You're an elf, and elves are especially susceptible to it-"

"So says the abomination."

"He's a good healer, Fenris. He knows what he's talking about."

Fenris does not look convinced. Hawke has historically had more success arguing with  actual brick walls than with Fenris  when in a particularly stubborn mood , but the thought of Fenris doubled over, desperately pale, choking blood and flitting in and out of consciousness the same way Merrill had  been  before they'd gotten her to Anders' clinic is enough to spur him onwards.

"Look, I know this is hard for you." Hawke says, mindful of the respectful gap between pity and genuine concern that he must artfully straddle to proceed without a fist in his sternum . Fenris has a tendency to clam up  and flee at the first sign of pity, and the plague ward is not nearly big enough for effective friend-avoidance.  "I know your feelings towards magic. I wouldn't be asking you to do this if it wasn't entirely, completely, utterly necessary. But this could kill you if we're not careful, and  I've already decided that I'm not losing anyone to this."

Fenris looks away, chewing the inside of his mouth. Hawke briefly wonders how much of Fenris'  perceived  brooding is in fact a combination of tactful consideration of what to say and naturally grumpy features.

"I appreciate your concern." Fenris finally decides on. "I'm not resisting treatment for the sake of being difficult. But I have suffered too much under the scrutiny of magic-users to trust my reflexes around it, and I doubt the mage's demon would  suffer such a provocation lightly."

Hawke briefly considers what  such a provocation might look like. He then considers the small size of the clinic, the high density of people, Justice's tetchiness near threats to Anders, Anders' pre-existing stress levels, and Anders' occasional propensity towards making things explode when taken by surprise .

" Ah." Hawke says, mental arithmetic completed. "Let's.... maybe hold off on the examination for a while, yes?"

Fenris curls his lips into a small smile. Despite being unusually pale and dour, he doesn't appear to be in the same kind of sweaty, tired, headache-y state that Merrill was before her sudden-onset blood explosion, though how much of that is simply Fenris' resolve to stiff-upper-lip his way through life is unclear. 

" Just promise me," Hawke says, "That if things  _do_ become bad, you'll let Anders heal you?"

"I f it comes to that ." Fenris answers, and though it's not an explicit promise, Hawke's chest unclenches just slightly.   


*

One up-side to being  justly imprisoned in Anders' clinic, Hawke decides early on, is the unrestricted view of Anders it affords him. 

The man is beautifully in his element as a healer. All day, people walk, limp and crawl into his clinic, and Hawke watches discreetly as Anders sits each down, heals their ills with a spell or a potion, then bashfully accepts their gratitude or delivers a stern lecture on boiling well water before drinking it or not eating bread that's more than forty percent green-and-furry. Some slink out the second they are able; some hang around, napping in the spare cots or chatting idly with the assistants. In the first day, Hawke watches as the clinic doors open to elves, humans, dwarves, a sheepish-looking Tal Vashoth, a group of almost-definitely apostates, battered-looking servants, weathered sailors, sooty foundry workers, tired guardsmen, courtesans from the Rose, and one bright-red lost-looking noble who nervously mutters something to Anders that makes him shake with the effort of containing his laughter. Anders turns none away. He sees them all, one-by-one, treating each with a kind of bright-eyed attentive care that Hawke had almost forgotten existed in the world.

" You're good at this," He tells Anders, when the man takes a rare break for supper. Hawke has done what he can with Bodahn's delivery, and the soup is a hit with everyone who isn't Sebastian ,  who has spent his day feverish, pained , nauseous and in exceptionally poor spirits. He's currently taking an angry nap . 

"Oh, it's not difficult." Anders says, sitting heavily down on the chair next to Hawke's cot,  blowing on  a spoonful of soup . "The trick is to just hold your nose so you don't actually taste it."

"That's not what I--  _Hey_ !" Hawke frowns at Anders , who's  chortling into his soup.

"I'm kidding." Anders explains, thankfully. "It's not bad, actually."

"I do try." Hawke smiles, trying to war the blush out of his cheeks.  It's ama z ing, how lit t le Anders needs to do to draw a reaction out of Hawke. He'd accuse Anders of blood magic if he didn't think  he'd take it entirely the wrong way. "I used to do most of the cooking in Lothering. And the cleaning. And the farmwork , come to think of it ."

"Really?" Anders asks. His knees are almost touching Hawke's. " What did the twins do?"

"Complain, mostly." Hawke shrugs.

" I can believe that ."

They sit in companionable silence for a moment. Beyond the fire, Varric has conned Isabela and Fenris into a rapid-fire card game that Fenris is evidently winning, if the  intermittent  gruff  hoots of victory from the depths of the blanket sarcophagus are anything to go by. 

"What did you mean, I'm good at this?" Anders finally asks , avoiding eye contact by stirring his half-finished soup.

"You know," Hawke says, motioning vaguely at the clinic at large. There are still a few patients milling about, and the two assistants that haven't gone home for the night - a young woman with a terrible attitude and a quiet young man who stalwartly refuses to acknowledge their existence \- are finishing up the tail ends of the cases.  "Healing." He finishes, lamely.

Anders chuckles, dropping his head. He's stripped out of his jacket, filthy undershirt rolled up to his elbows. It's a good look for him. "It's my job."

" Is it a job if you don't get paid?"

"My.... hobby?"

" Well,  whatever it is,  you're good at it."

" Flatterer ." Anders sighs, for a second  looks desperately tired, eyes glimmering in the half-light of the fire and the dim ambient lighting of Darktown at dusk.  "It's thankless  work , but someone has to do it."

"Well," Hawke says, looking into the depths of the fire to avoid looking at Anders' face, "Thanks. For doing this. Not just with the whole--" He nods towards their pestilence-stricken cohort, largely chipper for people in the throes of a blood plague, "--But, you know. The whole clinic thing. It's good of you."

_Well-said_ , his mind helpfully supplies. _Flawless execution. Nothing like convincing the man you're pining after that you're incapable of stringing together_ _any_ _sentence longer than four words_ _._ Well, at least he's not in any danger of getting possessed anytime soon, he thinks; no demon or spirit in their right mind would want to bear constant witness to the frequent and ineloquent shame he brings to the common tongue. 

H is shame is cut thankfully short by a noise that Hawke has become uncomfortably familiar with in the last few days: loud  choking , followed by the concerned shouts of two rogues in blood-splatter range.

"Andraste's knickerweasels," Anders curses, and Hawke would tease him for that if it  wasn't for  the fact that Fenris is suddenly on his hands and knees, hacking up blood all over the dirt floor.

" _Cot_ ," Anders orders, and Varric, having scrambled out of the way, quickly moves along with Isabela to drag the cot Fenris had claimed as his own to the fire. Hawke rushes to Fenris' side, helping Anders to extricate an exceptionally heavy and semi-conscious elf from four blankets. 

"Right, easy, here we go," Hawke mutters, helping gently hoist Fenris into the cot. He's deathly pale beneath his tattoos, eyes glazed where they're fluttering open and shut. He doesn't seem to realise that they're actually there, a fact signified as much by the fact that he doesn't take issue with Anders manhandling him as much as his slack expression and limp body.

"I bloody  _knew_ he was symptomatic, that shit," Anders hisses, in stark contrast to the gentleness of his movements. "No fever my pale Ferelden ass,  but  _sure,_ t he blanket collection was just for show." 

Hawke is reassured, a little counter-intuitively, by the angry muttering. It's a bad sign when Anders is silent and grim while working.

"Can you hear me, Fenris?" Anders says, firmly. Fenris twitches a little, brow furrowing lightly.

"Urgh." He says, cracking one bright green eye half-open.

" Hawke," Anders barks, one  hand coming to hover over Fenris' sternum, "Get me the blue potion from my desk. Now."

Hawke turns quickly to comply. Anders' desk resembles a Lowtown trash heap, over-encumbered with potions and reagents as it is. By the time Hawke locates the blue potion, Fenris has regained enough consciousness to weakly knock Anders' glowing hand away with a hiss.

" I'm trying to help you." Anders says, frowning as Fenris knocks the hand away again. 

"Here," Hawke says,  dropping the blue potion into Anders' free hand. He doesn't look up. 

" You'll need to drink this." Anders instructs, bringing the potion up to Fenris' mouth. Fenris turns his head, baring blood-covered teeth.

" _No_ ." 

"You don't have a choice," Anders says, eyes narrowing.

Hawke grimaces at what ranks particularly high on the worst possible things to say. Fenris is fixing Anders with a pained, glazed-eyed grimace. 

" _No_ . Do not-- "  He is cut short by more low, wet coughing. Blood pools at the side of his mouth and trickles down his cheek.

"For the love of--" Anders begins, not relenting with the potion. Hawke quickly sinks to his knees, lightly touching Anders' wrist to remove the  nauseatingly blue concoction  from Fenris' peripheral vision. 

"Fenris," Hawke begins, feeling buoyed by the semi-lucid eye contact he seems to be getting, "Trust me . We'll need to use magic to heal this, but I promise that we won't do anything that Anders doesn't explain first.  _Won't_ we?"

He directs the last question towards Anders, who's giving him an inscrutable look - somewhere between confusion, frustration, and the  simple desire to simply knock the elf unconscious and heal him without the  troublesome  extra steps in the middle.  He hazards the briefest raise of his brows, trying as hard as he can to convey what he's thinking -  _you asked for my help with Fenris, and here it is._

After a split second, Anders grits his teeth and nods. "Yes," He concedes, not looking particularly happy about it, "We will."

Fenris opens and closes his mouth a couple of times. His breathing sounds wet and hollow, like chilly winter wind through the  cavernous torso of a half-rotted dragon - just another of the experiences Kirkwall has given Hawke that he sincerely wishes it hadn't , and definitely not a good sign in any medical  context . 

"And we'll only perform the spell with your consent." Hawke adds, after a second, watching Anders frown dramatically in his peripher y . "Even though I  _strongly_ recommend you say yes.  What with all the coughing up blood and all ."

Fenris seems to consider this, or maybe the amount of blood currently in his airways, and inclines his head, eyes rolling to Anders. Anders steels himself with a sigh and a brief but cutting look at Hawke.

"I'm going to need to heal your airways," He says, as plainly and succinctly as possible. "The sickness is damaging the lining of your throat. You're hemorrhaging into your lungs, and this could kill you if we don't act quickly. It's just a simple healing spell, more or less the same kind I use to close stab wounds."

Fenris' gaze flickers rapidly back and forth between Anders and Hawke before he finally, blessedly, inclines his head just briefly. Anders brings his hand to Fenris' chest, letting it glow a light, shimmering blue. After a couple of seconds, Fenris takes a deep, shuddering breath, and Anders sags back with a trembling huff of exertion.

"All good?" Hawke asks, worry prickling at him as his eyes dance between the pale, shaky elf and the pale, shaky healer. They give him matching looks of tired-eyed affirmation.

"He'll need to drink the potion, too." Anders mutters, rubbing at his forehead. He's directing the question at Hawke, not Fenris, and Fenris has regained enough of himself to direct a withering glare his way for that. "It'll suppress the pain and ease his breathing."

"Fancy a drink?" Hawke asks, offering the potion to Fenris. He props himself up on  an arm and takes the proffered  flask , examining it critically with red-rimmed, squinting eyes . 

"It doesn't taste that bad," Merrill chimes in from across the cot-jumble. She's sitting up with her bowl of soup on her lap, having made it a valiant three-quarters of the way through the bowl before giving up.  "A bit like marzipan. But less sweet. And kind of earthy . So not very much like marzipan at all, really ."

"You have a bright future ahead of you as a food critic, Daisy." Varric says.

"Start with this soup." Isabela mutters.

"I heard that!"

"Are there side effects?" Fenris finally asks, swirling it a little in its bottle.

"No." Anders says, taking deep breaths. Hawke frowns. " It's as mild an analgesic as I can give you without risking interactions with your lyrium. You'll probably feel tired afterwards, but that's it. If this doesn't ease your pain, I'll prepare a stronger potion, but it'll likely knock you out for a long while. "

This is apparently enough for Fenris. He steels himself, upends the bottle, and drinks it all in a single swig.

"Better or worse than Hawke's soup?" Varric asks, patting Fenris heartily on the back. Fenris winces.

"....In the interests of friendship, I respectfully decline to answer." He says, strained, after a few thoughtful moments. Hawke pouts.

Or, he would, if his gaze wasn't caught by Anders, slowly clambering to his feet and pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. The conversation is quickly devolving into a five-way forum on the culinary merits of Hawke's soup, but Hawke can barely listen. Anders shoulders his way past the barricade, shaking lightly.

"-and we ended up having to subsist off of a stew made of three clams and old boot leather, and it  _still_ tasted better." Isabela finishes up, gesticulating .

"Compared to  traditional Dwarven fare , this is fit for a king." Varric counters, taking a big mouthful to accentuate.

"What do the Dwarves even eat?" Merrill asks, brow furrowed. "Does much grow down there?"

"Resentment and mushrooms, Daisy."

"I'm definitely getting notes of resentment." Isabela says, poking at her soup with a spoon.

"Not even gonna bother dignifying that with a response, huh?" Varric asks Hawke, brow quirked. Anders has disappeared into the shadows of the clinic.

"I-" Hawke begins. "Yes?"

"Well, have at it." Varric invites.

"Um." The clinic is empty but for the shadows, and Anders is nowhere to be seen. Hawke feels the distinct impression that he is not in the mood to be followed, and he crushes the urge to  seek him out . "I- Agree?"

The intellectual debate on the flavour profile of Hawke's soup explodes. Hawke settles onto his cot, squeezes Fenris' shoulder - still tense, if pale and shaking - and tries hard to not let anxiety consume him.

*

Hawke, not for the first time in the last few days, finds himself face-to-face with something he's fantasized about for three years , and  is hating every second of it.

"Any pain at all?" Anders asks. His face is about three inches from Hawke 's . He smells like elfroot salve, like simple soap, like the black tea he drank at breakfast. His skin is lightly freckled over the long bridge of his nose. There's a little scar under his left eye brow , running precariously close to his blonde lashes. 

"Nope." Hawke says, with some effort. Anders frowns.  He shifts his hand on Hawke's face. It's ridiculously warm, which softens it agains t the well-worn staff calluses on his palm.  One thumb gently pull s the skin of his left eyelid up, Anders' own honey-brown irises searching intently for  something.

Something medical in nature. Not adoration or love or lusty abandon, all of which are definitely inside Hawke but probably not the focus of Anders'  interest . 

"What about if I do this?" Anders says, pulling his hand away and letting it hover just over Hawke's temple , humming with some spell . It gently ghosts Hawke's hair.  Hawke prays for death.

"No. Nothing."

Anders sits back, huffing a sigh. "I just don't get it."

"Is it a dirty joke?" Merrill asks, over the top of Varric's latest  unpublished  chapter of  _Swords and Shields_ , relinquished for  ' proof reading ' only after a ninth-degree puppy dog eye . "Because I've found  it helps if you  picture it. "

Anders stands, wiping his hand on  a rag. Hawke sits back and tries to will his heart rate back to whatever is appropriate for having a friend get in your personal space for purely medical reasons, and not the one of creeps who can't suppress their  strange attractions for  long enough to have said object of attraction attempt to heal them, free of charge and out of the goodness of their heart. Or something like that.  _Maker_ , he needs  a stiff drink.

"It's not that," Anders says, frowning at Hawke. "I can't for the life of me figure out why Hawke hasn't developed any symptoms yet."

"I'm special." Hawke says, fluttering his lashes. His face still feels stupidly hot.

"That's a word for it." Isabela  mutters . She's been giving him an inscrutable look ever since Anders knelt down in front of him. Hawke shoo t s her a grumpy frown, and she sticks her tongue out at him. 

"Merrill, Sebastian and Fenris are all down for the count." Anders casts a quick look at the other end of the clinic. They're all doing better now that Anders has been allowed to intermittently heal the damage from the disease whenever it becomes bad enough, but it's still grounded them in fitful, hour-or-two long bouts of wakefullness between long stretches of groaning, restless sleep. "Hawke was also exposed. He should be developing symptoms, but I can't see any trace of it."

" Maybe we've stumbled onto the ideal human body , completely immune to disease ." Varric theorises. He's having a grand old time of it, making headway on a new novel that he refuses to disclose the subject of. Every so often, he looks up at the lot of them and smirks to himself, scribbling down something new. It bodes poorly.

" Ah, yes. Who would have guessed the secret is a  diet of mostly beer and inhuman amounts of meat ? " Isabela  chimes , examining her nail. 

"Sometimes  bread." Hawke adds, defensively.

"It doesn't count if the layer of butter is thicker than the layer of bread . " Anders thoughtlessly tugs out his hair tie and shakes out his hair before gently bringing it back up again. Hawke almost  has a cardiac event . Isabela doesn't even bother to hide her snicker.

"Are you kidding? That's the only way to eat it." Varric defends.

" That doesn't apply to Dwarves." Anders says. "I've had Dwarven bread before. You need the butter to lubricate your throat if you actually want to  swallow  it."

"Well, there's your problem. Dwarven bread isn't for eating. It's for defending against Darkspawn and solving house disputes at the dinner table." He sets his quill down to mime the act of bludgeoning someone with a roll of bread. Hawke winces.

" Maybe you were just standing too far away from the crate?" Merrill suggests. "You  _were_ pretty far back, the whole fight. Maybe you just didn't get hit with it?"

"That's a possibility," Anders  concedes , frowning at Hawke. "But you were still exposed to Merrill's blood when you brought her in here."

"And Varric and I are fine so far." Isabela points out. "Maybe he's just a late bloomer."

Anders chews on the inside of his cheek and says nothing.  Hawke almost wants to apologise for not being deathly ill.

H e doesn't get a chance; from across the clinic, one of the assistants calls out for Anders, and he quickly sidles through the barricade of crates to attend to whatever life-or-death peril is unfolding in the section of the clinic not reserved for the  helplessly pestilent. 

"You," Isabela says, accusitory, as soon as Anders is out of earshot, "Need to tell him."

Hawke briefly entertains the idea that she isn't talking to him, but Varric has returned to his novel and Merrill has abandoned hers to curl up and nap.

"What?" Hawke asks, sliding off his cot to come and sit cross-legged on the end of Isabela's. She's tucked under her blanket, legs drawn up and nestling a mug of tea in her hands. She has no business looking as cosy as she does in a flimsy canvas cot in a dilapidated sewer clinic, but as with most things that aren't her business, she simply doesn't let that stop her.

"Him." Isabela sighs, nodding towards the  healer. Hawke frowns. "You need to tell him."

"Tell him what?" Hawke asks, perfectly aware of what but not willing to let Isabela off easily. She gives him a truly spectacular eye-roll.   
  


"That you want to polish his staff."

"Really, Isabela?"

"You _know_. Suck on his fireballs. Master his taint."

"I get it."

"...Ruffle his feathers. Raise his spirits."

"You can stop now."

"...Chain his lightning-"

"That one doesn't even make sense." Hawke grumbles, shoving at the lump of blanket he presumes is her leg. She hides her snigger with a liberal sip of her tea.

"You simply need to be more imaginative." She instructs, smacking her lips. "But the point still stands."

Beyond the barricade, Anders has apparently resolved whatever dire situation was unfolding. He's now comforting a crying child, the  red-faced toddler hoisted onto his hip so that she can grab at his feather pauldrons . Hawke feels his heart twist treacherously in his chest.

"I know," He concedes, running a hand through his hair. "But it just doesn't feel like the right time."

"What's a better time than this?" Isabela asks, gesturing to the impromptu plague ward. Hawke raises a brow.

"Is that a serious question?" He asks, sighing. "Worst case scenario,  it's not mutual and we spend the next two weeks awkwardly avoiding each other in a space that's barely twenty feet by thirty. Best case,  it is , and we can't act on it because all you chucklefucks are in the same room."

Even just entertaining the thought of him potentially returning Hawke's increasingly confusing set of feelings is enough to bring a slight flush to Hawke's face. This does not escape Isabela's notice, who smirks at him from behind her mug.

"Why not? I'd pay to watch the two of you together."

"And I'll keep that in mind if I ever need some extra coin." Hawke says, a little wistfully. Across the clinic, Anders has moved on to healing an old lady with a wracking cough, flexing his glowing fingers with attentive tenderness. "But that's even _if_ he would ever return my feelings."

"Eurgh," Isabela says,  grimacing . "You're bringing feelings into it?"

Hawke's face heats despite himself. "It's not by choice." He sighs, fiddling with a loose thread on the blanket to avoid Isabela's raptor-like scrutiny, "I mean, I'm definitely attracted to him. He's cute. In a sexy, tortured, sewer-dwelling way."

Isabela casts a wistful gaze at the healer from across the clinic. "You should have met him five years ago. I know for a fact he cleans up nicely."

"Thanks for reminding me." Hawke grumbles, still a little bitter about the revelation that Isabela and Anders'd had a  _history_ , but not above letting his mind wander a bit to the subject during.... certain moments.  "But I get so.... weird around him. I don't know. I've never felt this before. I kind of want to hold his hand."

Isabela looks horrified. " That's disgusting."

Hawke sighs. "I know."

"Maybe something's wrong with you." She says, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. "Maybe this is  some kind of weird symptom of the.... Yergukug fever or whatever."

"Yergshmerdt."

"Bless you." Isabela furtively glances to the side, taking a long sip of her tea. "But your perverted fantasies aside, I really think you ought to come clean."

Beyond the barricade, Anders has healed the old woman. She's got one of Anders' hands between both of her own, saying something tearfully that's made the healer flush warmly and smile. Hawke crushes the urge to swoon like a heroine in one of Varric's more terrible romance novels.

"I know." Hawke groans.

"It'll be good for you." Isabela advises, following his gaze. "And good for him. That's a man in need of a good, hard pounding if I've ever seen one."

"On a flimsy cot, in a clinic in the middle of a blood plague, in plain view of most of my social circle." Hawke raises a brow. Isabela shrugs.

"It'd work for me."

"How are you  dealing with the complete and utter lack of sex, anyway?" Hawke asks,  hurling himself with reckless abandon at the first  off road the conversation affords him. "I'd have thought you'd be comatose from lack of orgasms  or something  by now."

Isabela sends him a devilish smile. "Who said anything about lack of orgasms?"

Hawke reels. "Oh, ick, Isabela, basically all of our friends are less than ten feet away from you at all times--"

"Who's to say," She intones, leaning in conspiratorially, "That  I'm not getting my rocks off  _right now_ ?"

Hawke shoves at her, and she throws an arm over her head, over-dramatically rolling her eyes back and moaning.

"Oh, baby, harder-!"

A silence falls over the clinic. The old lady Anders'd been healing is looking at the back of the clinic with  a fair amount of concern.

"Sorry," Hawke calls , face beet-red . Isabela is s haking with laughter . " Incurable b rain fever.  Very tragic ."


	3. Chapter 3

Hawke is getting exceptionally tired of waking up to the sounds of people hacking up their insides.

He cracks one eye open to the dim dawn light of the clinic, appreciating the  collection of blurry colours before his vision corrects and it reve als itself to be Isabela, propped up by Anders and Varric both, choking blood all down her white top. 

"Easy, easy," Anders is mumbling, rubbing a glowing blue hand just under her clavicle.

"Hurgh," Isabela answers, wiping at her lip with a shaking hand. She spits a large mouthful of blood into the bucket in her lap. Varric winces.

"Good morning," Hawke greets, stretching.

"Don't be so sure about that," Varric sighs, letting Isabela adjust her weight onto mostly him so that Anders can duck away to his desk and retrieve the blue potion.

"You too, huh?" Hawke asks, blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

"Urgh," Isabela agrees cordially.

H awke is about to answer, but across the clinic, Fenris does it for him by  letting out a groan that midway turns into a deafening coughing fit . Anders curses, pressing the blue potion into Varric's hand  to wind his way through the cots to get to Fenris'.

"Fun times," Hawke sighs.

"Gurgh, " Merrill agrees,  groaning weakly beside him. Hawke obligingly passes her the bucket, which she  takes with a brief nod  and a wracking cough.

" Well, I guess it really is the plague," Varric sighs. Isabela has finished the potion and is now burying her sorrows in Varric's chest hair. 

"Looks like it," Hawke mutters. "I'm starting to feel left out."

"Don't be," Sebastian groans from somwhere across the clinic.

"How we doing, Choir Boy?" Varric shoots over his shoulder.

Sebastian answers by engaging in a two-minute coughing fit.

Hawke stretches out, pillowing his arms behind his head. " Good morning to you too, I guess."

*

" This is foolish."

"It's  _fun_ , Fenris." Hawke corrects, swirling his stew. "So--"

"What if don't want to fuck any of them?"

"That's the point of the game," Varric reminds him.

"What if none of them want to fuck me?"

"Who wouldn't?" Hawke sighs, batting his lashes. "You're a stunner."

Fenris rolls his bloodshot eyes. How anyone can be  haughty while looking one stiff breeze away from falling down and not ever getting up again is beyond Hawke, but he makes a mental note to ask for some pointers later. 

"I wouldn't," Anders says.

"I would," Isabela says.

"I would by lying if I hadn't thought about it," Varric contributes.

" I t happened once in a dream, " Merrill confesses. "But not sure I like the thought of all those spikes near anywhere so sensitive."

"Just answer the question, Fen," Hawke begs. He's sat cross-legged  on the floor  next to Fenris' cot, where the elf has  stripped away his many blankets under the sweltering heat of an impressive fever. It's the perfect vantage point for  him to fix  Hawke with a withering glare, which he promptly does with fevered  gusto .

" Venhedis. Fine. I'd kill Anders."

"Shocker." Anders grumbles. He has his fingers pressed against Merrill's temple, measuring something against a pocket watch that he doesn't bother looking up from .  " It's a mercy if the alternative is either marrying or fucking you. "

Fenris pays him no mind. "I'd fuck the Arishok."

Hawke gives a hoot of approval while Varric and Isabela both curse. "See? I told you I wasn't the only one."

"The Qunari view sexual release as a need to be met with a skill, something that can be practiced and excelled at." Fenris explains. "The Arishok would likely be... proficient."

"That's more cerebral than what you were suggesting, Hawke."

"What was  wrong with my reasoning?" Hawke complains. "Abs and arms. What more do you need?"

"I think he's just turned on by the danger of it."  Varric theorises. "You seem to choose your partners based solely off of how unsurvivable the encounter is."

"That's true,"  Isabela concedes , thoughtfully and perhaps a little hypocrit i cally. To be fair, they  _have_ spent the last three years being regaled with Hawke's many and varied stories of brazen hookup s ( a concerning amount of which do seem to end with  ' _and then I had to run_ _naked_ _for my life_ ', come to think of it . ) "If we left him alone long enough we'd probably find him trying to stick his dick in one of the  foundry forges. "

"I  _was_ thinking that they were looking exceptionally sexy lately," Hawke sighs, "But I digress. I guess that means you'd marry the Knight Commander?"

Fenris nods. "It'd suffice."

Anders snorts something ungenerous, withdrawing his fingers from Merrill's head and moving on to Sebastian.

"Your turn," Varric says, steepling his fingers over his chest with a devilish look in his eye.

"Hawke," Fenris finally decides, narrowing his eyes.  "Same question."

Hawke sits back, smiling widely. "Well, this one is easy. Marry the Arishok."

"What happened to fucking him?" Varric asks.

"He'd make a good husband." Merrill agrees. "You'd always have someone to reach the high shelves and open jars."

"Precisely," Hawke agrees. "Kill Meredith, of course."

" _Thank you_ ." Anders says, pointedly casting a glare Fenris' way. Fenris rolls his eyes. 

"And I suppose you'd fuck the abomination?" Fenris asks, sounding ill for reasons that likely don't entirely relate to the severe illness he's in the grip of.

"Absolutely!" Hawke beams, face a little hot in a way that he can pass off as his proximity to the fire. "Killing Meredith would be our foreplay, of course."

He revels in the chorus of groans of varying degrees of disgust that arise from around the fire.  A surreptitious glance at Anders says he's not looking at him, but if Hawke thinks particularly wishfully, he thinks he can see a little bit of a flush going on over the sliver of cheekbone he can see. 

" Sebastian," He says, "Meredith, Orsino, the Arishok."

"Blessed be the meek, for they shall--"

"Ugh, fine. Varric! Same question."

"Kill the Arishok," Varric starts, ticking the contenders off on his fingers. He looks sufficiently thoughtful, a glass of something dark-brown and Dwarven in origin cradled in one hand, robe falling open over his bare chest. "Can't imagine how it'd work out between a Dwarf and a Qunari, physically speaking."

"I could see it working," Isabela says, lifting her hands to demonstrate, "You' re  just  going to need to-- "

"Marry Meredith," Varric interrupts, before the demonstration can progress towards the  psychologically challenging . 

"It's been fun, Varric," Anders sighs, not looking up from the pocketwatch, "I'll miss you."

"I won't _stay_ married to her, of course," Varric quickly corrects. "What's the use of having your fingers in every crime gang if you can't pull a few strings here and there and make a spouse disappear?"

"So you'd fuck Orsino?" Hawke asks.

"Of course! I've heard what Circle Mages get up to." He flicks a meaningful gaze towards Anders, who's frowning at his pocketwatch and Sebastian's temple alternatingly. "I'm sure he has some moves."

There ensues the kind of brief silence that can only be shared by seven people considering the relative fuckability of their city's various figureheads.

"Rivaini," Varric  finally  ad d resses, swirling his drink thoughtfully,  " Daisy, Hawke, Blondie."

"Ooh, mage edition. Let's see." Isabela reclines, staring up at the tall, cobwebbed ceiling. "Is a foursome an option?"

"We already agreed it wasn't," Hawke reminds her. "Though I wouldn't be opposed."

"Well, that simplifies it. I'd marry Merrill, obviously." She ticks each off her fingers. "Fuck Anders, kill Hawke."

"That was fast," Anders observes.

Hawke sputters. "What-- Kill me?  _Me?_ "

"We shall have a summer wedding," Merrill agrees sagely.

"But kill me?" Hawke frowns at her. "I thought we were friends, Bela. I'd say that's grounds for a good fucking, if not marriage."

"It's the electricity thing, sweetling," Isabela sighs. "If you felt it, you'd understand."

Hawke wants to feel it. Hawke has fantasized about it in great detail ever since he'd heard about it, in fact.

"Would you wear the dress, or would I?" Merrill asks, looking entirely too invested. "Oh! Or would we _both_?"

"I can't belive you wouldn't fuck me."

"We could _all_ wear dresses!"

"I never said that," Isabela answers, patting him on the head. "I said if the options were between you, Merrill and Anders, I'd choose to fuck Anders. Just because you're last on the list doesn't mean you're off it."

Hawke pouts.

"Dalish weddings usually involve a grand hunt, though, and I'm not sure how we'd do one of those in the city, unless we wanted to hunt rats...."

"Real friends don't kill other friends."

"Would it make you feel better if I fucked you?" Isabela asks, sighing, her fingers coming to the top lace of her corset.

"Not in my clinic, you won't," Anders grumbles, expression suddenly stormy.

"The damage is done," Hawke sniffs dramatically, crossing his arms. "I'll just wait for the final blow, now."

"Oh! The _rats_ could wear dresses, too--!"

Varric interrupts. "Rivaini, it's your turn."

"Indeed it is," Isabela says, and Hawke only belatedly notices the particular glint in her eye. It's a special look, one that belies the notorious pirate queen, one that Hawke has learnt usually precedes a death-defying act of roguery."Anders! Hawke, the Hero of Ferelden, Varric."

Hawke  wants to kill her. Hawke would kill her - or try to, anyway - but Anders always enforces his ' _no violence in my clinic or so help me I will_ _reduce you to a pile of ash_ '  rule  strictly and frighteningly quickly . He settles for schooling his features into the most disappointed that they will go, and hopes it'll be enough to make her feel at least a little bit ashamed of herself.

"Tough one." Anders looks thoughtful. Hawke wants to give up on human existence and become an earthworm.

Isabela winks. A no on the shame front, then.

"Is the Hero of Ferelden any good in bed?" Varric asks Isabela. She shrugs, examining a nail.

"Excellent. A bit wild, but oh, that Grey Warden stamina...."

"That doesn't surprise me," Anders says, wistfully. "She's batshit. In a good way, mostly, but still."  
  


"Oh, don't I know it," Isabela purrs. "Well?"

"Come on, Blondie." Varric coos. "You know I'd treat you right."

"But you're spoken for," Anders sighs, melodramatically miming the action of wiping a tear from his eye. "And I'd never do that to Bianca."

"True."

"Alright," Anders says. Hawke wants to launch himself into the chasm outside and embrace life as a buoy. "I think I've got it. I'd have to kill Varric."

"Offended." Varric says. Anders squeezes his shoulder.

"I'd fuck the Hero of Ferelden."

"Good choice," Isabela concedes.

"Not the other way around?" Fenris asks, suspiciously. Anders gives a one-armed shrug.

"Maker, no. I've seen that woman in action. Sorry, Varric, you're formidable, but I once watched the Commander punch an Emissary to death while naked. I'll not take any chances."

"Wait," Isabela says, eyebow raised. "Does that mean...?"

"Of course!" Anders says, cheerfully.  Hawke is close to requesting healing for the strange, tight sensation going on his chest . "I'd make a nice wife. I give the best backrubs."

Hawke feels his face burning beet red. He wrangles desperately with his internal instinct to crack a joke, make a snide comment, laugh it off somehow, but all the processing power of his brain is suddenly occupied by the mental image of coming home to Anders in an apron with a backrub ready and waiting.

_Relax,_ the elusive sensible part of his brain berates him.  _It was just a joke. Keep your trousers on._

_We will have a summer wedding,_ the other part decides.

" Anyway," Anders begins, exceptionally glib for someone who has just decimated Hawke's ability to think, "Merrill - Aveline, the Arishok--  _Andraste's arse-!"_

"Well, I can't imagine marrying anyone's arse, but I've seen your statues, and I have to say she isn't entirely-"

Whatever Anders'd been reacting to cuts off the rest of Merrill's observations on the relative eligibility of Andraste's posterior. A heavily pregnant woman is flying through the doors of the clinic, escorted by two less pregnant but equally panicked ladies. Anders abandons his examinations, wiping his hands down as he bustles through the barricade.

"Well, I guess that means it's a night," Varric sighs, stretching out on his cot. "Can't think of any game we can play to the sounds of someone giving birth in the next room."

"Wicked grace?" Merrill suggests.

"I'm in," Isabela hums. "Hawke?"

Hawke can see the barest hint of ankle poking out from the privacy screen drawn close over the soon-to-be-mother. He thinks of the man behind it, who's dropped everything once more to help the helpless with no expectation of recompense. That man, so principled, so driven, who bleeds himself dry on a daily basis to save those who are otherwise forgotten and damned.

He thinks of getting a backrub from him.

"Deal me in," Hawke groans, running a hand through his hair. Maker, but that one's going to haunt him until his dying day. "And for the Maker's sake, pour me a glass of wine, would you?"

*

"I'm honestly surprised." Aveline says, unwrapping her sandwich. "I'd have thought that you'd have all torn out each other's throats by this point."

Hawke shifts on the crate he's reappropriated as a seat in order to look back at the plague ward. The disease has progressed, and all four of those affected are unconscious in increasingly improbable positions over the mess of cots.

Varric sucks air in through his teeth. "It's gotten real close a couple of times, let me tell you."

Hawke shrugs. " T hey're too sick for the time being . Give them a week to recover and I'm sure  you'll be seeing throat-tearing aplenty ."

Aveline hums in agreement, taking a bite of her sandwich . The barricade, it turns out, makes a semi-decent dining table . It's midway through what looks to be a beautiful day if the crack in the wall is anything to go by, and Aveline has thoughtfully brought by sandwiches in what is a potentially over-optimistic assumption that they're all still alive and  capable of eating. 

"So, how's the city doing?" Hawke asks, deftly plucking a pickle from the folds of an otherwise perfect roast beef sandwich. Varric wordlessly opens his own sandwich for Hawke to deposit it. "Start with how many  insane blood mage attacks there've been and work backwards from there."

Aveline rolls her eyes. "Only one," She concedes, "But it was quickly... taken care of. Otherwise, we've just had our hands full trying to contain _this_ mess."

She nods towards the mass of pale, twisting bodies and buckets of blood in the plague ward.

"It's not fun." Varric warns her. "I'd be careful handing those crates if I were you."

"They've been destroyed. We've cordoned off the warehouse and found the captain." Aveline reports. "He was clueless, it seems. Same with his crew. We've got them all under observation but they disembarked a week ago and have yet to show any symptoms, so I'd say we're in the clear."  
  


"Well, that's good." Hawke agrees.

"Any news from the Hanged Man?" Varric asks.

"We had someone clean up the blood from your suite." Aveline says. "Which reminds me, I wanted to talk to you about some of the things that were recovered from--"

"Well, would you look at that!" Varric interrupts, "I think they used Nug Ham for this one. How exotic."

"Nug ham?" Hawke asks, face twisting.

"Orzammar delicacy," Varric clarifies. "Or Orzammar practical joke they play on surfacers. Never quite figured out which."

" _Regardless_ ," Aveline interrupts, leveling a _look_ at them both, "My point is, by and large, it seems the situation is under control. It's just you lot that are affected."

"Do you see me choking up blood?' Hawke grumbles. "Don't group me in with  these  lepers ."

At that, Aveline's face seems to soften a bit. "How are they doing, anyway?"

"Up and down," Varric reports.

"Mostly down." Hawke clarifies.

Aveline sighs, toying with the corner of the butcher's paper that the sandwich had been wrapped in. "I feel badly for the lot of you," She admits, with uncharacteristic gentleness. "What I saw of the fever in Denerim was terrible. I hate to think of anyone I know having to suffer through it."

Hawke wants to reach out across the barricade and take her hand, but is less willing to endure the twenty-minute quarantine lecture from Anders. He settles for sending her as sympathetic a look as he can muster with mustard still clinging to his beard.

"We're fine, Aveline." He reminds her. "We're in good hands."

"Blondie's taking good care of them," Varric promises.

"I know," She says. Her eye falls on the jumbled maze of cots. It currently resembles an ungodly chimera of blanket and various limbs, littered with bloodstains and uneven flashes of skin. "Is there anything I can do?"

"You'd be better off directing that question at Blondie," Varric says. "He has us doing a few chores here and there but we're not allowed to interact with the rest of the clinic while we're in the 'infectious phase'."

"We're plague-ridden filth monsters and he doesn't want our stink on his nice, clean clinic," Hawke clarifies.

Aveline feels sorry enough for them that she gives him a pity-huff of laughter. "I'll ask him when I see him. Speaking of--" She flickers her gaze around, "Where is he, anyway?"

Hawke looks around.  Usually, he's hyper-aware of Anders' presence at all times, what with the inconvenient infatuation he has going on, but he's found lately that Anders' talk of 'blending in in Darktown'  apparently  extends to his physical appearance; it's suprisingly hard to locate his  largely neutral colour scheme in the varying brown tones of  the Undercity . Handy for avoiding Templars and  needy  plague-ridden friends both, Hawke thinks.

"Not sure," Varric says, furrowing his brow. "Haven't seen him in a little while."

"He'll turn up," Hawke says. "Like a cat. You just let him do his thing and  trust he'll be around for dinner ."

Aveline rolls her eyes, but there's a smile on her face despite an apparently substantial amount of effort for there not to be. "Well, send him my regards when he does. And tell the others to get better soon. I do kind of miss them."

"You miss having someone to cause trouble for you to clean up," Varric translates, winking.

"Whatever you need to tell yourself," She sighs, balling up the butcher's paper and standing. "Take care, you two."

Varric and Hawke watch as she winds her way out through the clinic. It's not particularly busy, and Anders' assitants seem to be managing fairly well the meandering influx of day-to-day complaints.

"Where _is_ Blondie, anyway?" Varric finally asks, casting a look around.

"Not sure," Hawke answers, feeling a little uncomfortable. "Getting some fresh air, hopefully. Being cooped up in here has made me really appreciate how necessary a little sunshine is every once in a while."

"Tell me about it," Varric agrees, stretching his legs out to rest on the barricade. "And they wonder why I prefer the surface."

"For someone who hates the Deep Roads so much, he really chose the place most reminiscent of it to make a home out of." Hawke casts a glance upwards. Every so often, a tiny flake of marble or a small cloud of dust will descend from the ceiling, reminding him casually of the several thousand tonnes of stone hovering above their heads. It's not particularly pleasant.

"Makes it hard to sleep at night," Varric agrees.

"Speaking of," Hawke breaks off and yawns, "I think I'm about ready for a nap. May as well take advantage of these sickos being down for the count to get some sleep."

"Do they really have to coordinate their coughing fits for the break of dawn?" Varric agrees, rubbing his eyes.

"It's just plain inconsiderate."

"I mean, just go hack up your lungs someplace with worse acoustics, thank you."

"Can't even die quietly." Hawke shakes his head.  " So rude . "

*

Joking about Fenris' surpisingly kleptomaniacal tendencies towards the clinic's textiles is one thing; trying to wrestle a blanket away from a fevered, semi-delirious, hemorrhaging elf with the strength of five men and the stubborn resolve of twenty is completely another.

"Fenris. Fenris. Fen. Please." Hawke says, punctuating each syllable with a light tug on the blanket. Fenris cracks open one overbright green eye, rimmed with angry red, and Hawke is promptly reminded of the many and various times he's watched its owner wrench a still-beating heart clean out of a chest.

Fenris mumbles something that is either 'go away' or possibly ' your end shall be swift and not painless '. Hawke gives the blanket another tug.

"Please, Fen? I'm tired. I just need one. You have plenty."

"Get your own." He grumbles, twisting even further into the blanket tomb.

Hawke gives the blanket another pointed tug. "This one _was_ mine."

Fenris closes his eyes again. "Preposterous. Yours was white."

Hawke frowns mournfully at the red-brown hue of a blanket thoroughly soaked in patches of blood. " _Was_."

"Leave me be," Fenris commands, lowly. "There's more in the cupboard."

"Anders has a cupboard?" Hawke asks, but Fenris is either already asleep or doing a n impeccable job of pretending to be, and no response is forthcoming. 

Hawke stands, sighs, and looks around the clinic. As far as he can tell, the space that is now occupied by the clinic was never intended as even a room, and most of its functional aspects are outside elements arranged into a haphazard quasi-practical setup. He can't see a cupboard. He can't even see any outcroppings or particularly generous holes in the walls that could be reapproptiated as cupboards.

"Maker's balls," He directs at no one in particular.

There's not a whole lot of space in the clinic. He briefly considers asking one of the assistants, but the only one left for the day is the young elven woman - _Clarie? Cherie? -_ with an Orlesian accent and sneering hatred for the lot of them, so he steers clear of her and wanders the perimeter of the section of the clinic he can access without violating quarantine, aching for his cot and a semi-serviceable blanket.

"Cupboard, cup- _board...._ " He repeats to himself quietly, in case the problem here is that he's forgotten what a cupboard is. Maybe Fenris was simply delusional with fever and  imagined the whole cupboard .  This is not impossible; Anders has kept the supply of painkillers constant and unrelenting upon their more beleaguered comrades, which has helped reduce the frequency of pained groans but not a whole lot for their collective coherency.

This is the going theory until the third circuit, when he realises that the old upturned table he's passed by three times now is actually a makeshift door.

"Aha." He says, triumphantly, pushing it out of the way.

"Maker's breath--"

"Oh." Hawke blinks, eyes adjusting to the darkness. "Hi, Anders."

The 'closet' (which in retrospect is fairly generous) is a space that's roughly the width of one man with his arms outstretched, if that man had suffered a tragic accident that had removed his fingers. The clinic , strapped for supplies on the best of days, doesn't have much to store ,  so there's enough space for  two crates  to be  set up in such a way that  someone could sit comfortably on one and stare intently at the other.

Which is what Anders had apparently been doing. Hawke shifts on his feet uncertainly.

"Hi, Hawke."

"Nice closet," Hawke says.

Anders blinks at him. In the semi-darkness of the closet, his face looks particularly tired and gaunt. "Thanks," He finally says. He shfts his long legs a little to the side, which Hawke belatedly realises is an invitation to sit on the opposite crate. He does so with minor trepidation.

"So, this is where you come to escape us, huh?" Hawke asks. It's not a bad panic room; not well-concealed enough that it could be used to hide from Templars, but out-of-the-way enough that it definitely allows some semblance of privacy in the otherwise open-plan clinic.

Anders scrubs at his face with one hand. In the other is a cup of tea, no longer steaming. "Not you specifically, but that's the idea, yeah."

"Oh." Hawke says, shifting a little. "Want me to--?"

"No, it's okay." Anders sighs. "I just needed a moment."

"Ah."

A moment indeed passes. Hawke enjoys the simple, giddy joy proximity to Anders always seems to bring out in him.

"Wait a minute," Hawke suddenly blurts, succumbing to his natural instinct to not let any moment go on too long unruined, "You're claustrophobic."

" Mmm-hmm. "

Hawke looks pointedly around the small closet.

Anders shrugs.

" You know, Anders," Hawke says, taking stock of the tiny space. It's sparse , dustless in that way that suggests it's well-used . "I think you're a bit confused. A panic room is where you go in a panic, not where you go specifically  to make yourself panic."

"I came up with a way of  talking  myself down when I was in-" Anders pauses, as though tripping up on a word. He smothers whatever had been about to come out with a sip of tea. "-The Deep Roads.  It's easier to remember how to when I put myself in a small space . It's almost comforting, in a way. "

"The demon you know?" Hawke surmises, and instantly kicks himself for his poor choice of words. If Anders notices it, however, he says nothing of it. He merely nods, a loose lock of hair falling free to dangle around his face.

"I guess so."

As far as coping mechanisms go, Hawke supposes that there are worse out there. He, for one, manages his stress by occasionally reducing a bandit to a fine paste.

"Anything in particular you want to talk about?" Hawke offers, after a couple of seconds.

Anders looks up at him , something playing at the elegant features of his face.  He sighs, lightly pinches the bridge of his nose, and blinks up again, expression now  frustratingly blank . 

"Nothing important." He swirls his tea, a barely perceptible spark of magic playing on its surface. It begins steaming lightly again. "It's just been a stressful week."

"You can say that again." Hawke agrees.   
  


"It's a lot , " Anders says. He's pointedly looking at the lightly rippling surface of his tea, blonde lashes obscuring his gaze. This close, Hawke can count his freckles even despite the low light. He actively resists the urge to do so, employing his favoured strategy of imagining Varric's expression of sheer disgust that he'd surely summon if Hawke  ever admitted to it.

"Are you okay?" Hawke asks.

Anders huffs out something too sullen and dour to truly be a laugh. "I will be."

Hawke directs his gaze to the thin sliver of vantage point the makeshift door affords him. Beyond the closet, the plague ward is  almost suspiciously peaceful, its occupants by-and-large in the grip of fever-induced exhaustion. 

"I know it's a thankless job," Hawke begins, feeling thankful that the dim light probably hides his flush. He hopes, anyway. "But thank you. If these idiots haven't said it yet. I don't know what we'd do without you. We owe you one."

Anders looks up. There's some kind of expression on his face, not quite surprise, not quite gratitude. It lasts the span of one of the better seconds Hawke's experienced over the last few days before he lets it slip into a small smile that he ducks his head to hide.

"Is there anything I can do?" Hawke finally asks.

Anders looks at him through his lashes. Hawke thinks very hard about Varric's disgusted face ( _"_ _Dammit_ _, Hawke, it's so cliche, I can't write this--")_ and returns what he hopes is a smile that is the perfect amount of friendly and thoroughly devoid of besotted.

"Just-- keep me company a while?" Anders finally asks. His knee knocks lightly against Hawke's. It's terribly warm. "Just until I finish this cup."

Hawke smiles. Even the picture-perfect recollection of Varric's disgusted face is not enough to stop him, this time.


End file.
